Pirating games that are near impossible to play is fine. There's this one Genesis RPG that's like Zelda that's never been re-released and hard copies for the console are unreasonably priced. I don't see the harm in not paying for abandonware.

Gamecube games too. I mean, what am I gonna do, spend 200 quid on a used Path of Radiance disk with no box or play the rom on the objectively superior emulator?

Azuren said:

It's one thing if you're not given the option to purchase the title anymore, such as with Alan Wake. It's quite another to use a Wii U emulator just to play Breath of the Wild without paying for it.

lol I did that xD

Last edited by IkePoR - on 14 May 2019

"You should be banned. Youre clearly flaming the president and even his brother who you know nothing about. Dont be such a partisan hack"

"Piracy is not theft," he said. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. There is no such thing as a 'lost sale'. Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

I mean... what would he know about economics, it's not like he is a billionaire now.... oh wait.

Personally I pirated MC on the pc originally, then bought it for the PS3/Vita, upgraded that version for the ps4 and I got the Switch version of it as well later on. Piracy showed me that game was good and the devs feelings regarding piracy made me feel happy to chuck him the price of the game a few times down the line.

I don't pirate because;

A - I have a job.

B - Not having funds isn't an excuse for stealing, neither is having the inability to access said video game. That's not the company's fault - it's yours.

C - Video games are a privilege, not a right

D - 99% of gamers don't realize that buying a video game that you enjoy helps the developers/publishers who used time & resources to make that game. People with families to feed and jobs to keep made that game. Try inventing something that costs tens of millions of dollars to create, then see how you like it when someone pirates your shit.

And get outta here with your cherry picked example of one dude and one paragraph. Does he speak for the entire games industry? Or better yet, the entire entertainment industry that's also affected by piracy

Currently Playing:

99% of gamers don't realize that buying a video game that you enjoy helps the developers/publishers who used time & resources to make that game. People with families to feed and jobs to keep made that game. Try inventing something that costs tens of millions of dollars to create, then see how you like it when someone pirates your shit.

And get outta here with your cherry picked example of one dude and one paragraph. Does he speak for the entire games industry? Or better yet, the entire entertainment industry that's also affected by piracy

I didn't think so...

No one speaks for the entire industry of anything.

It's a cherry picked example, but it's not the only one even on this thread, as I've already said I wouldn't mind piracy if it meant more people enjoying my music (which is not applicable to the current state of my work, by the way). If you think game developers can't sustain their work or their families because a few random people are downloading the game for free, I think you greatly overestimate the impact of piracy... be real here, how many of those pirates would actually buy the game if there was no other way to play it? Very few, I think. The income would be irrelevant compared to the word of mouth you get otherwise.

Again using the 3rd world example here, gaming as a whole really started to blossom here during the PS1 and PS2 days, consoles that were very piracy-"friendly". They thrived exactly because everyone, kids and teens from that generation, could easily afford any games and as a result, that generation was exposed to a ridiculously large variety of content. Nowadays? Maybe gaming isn't quite as popular as during those days, but it sure is a big thing and there are loads and loads of people who buy everything they play - the same people who were playing games ilegally as kids a decade or two ago. When I was younger, there was no such thing as an actual, official, licensed videogame. No one had that. It was a whole generation born of piracy, that for the most part, grew out of it. Money lost during the piracy years? No, money being won now, because without piracy, the gaming market here would've remained niche.

Currently Playing:

I pirated games in thc C64 era as a 12-14 year old. I also paid for roughly 40 C64 games, mostly through what was called a "paper route". It was like the internet as you know it today, but with 100% less pornography, and I would throw it at you.

I am currently "pirating" One Punch Man Season 2, only because I have no other option to see it now. I will buy it on Blu-Ray as soon as I can, and probably pay through the nose. I paid $80 CAD for season 1. If I had no choice, I'd pirate it outright. It's a tough world. I support it because I can though.

Currently Playing:

Every study on this topic has shown that piracy in fact increases the sales of content in the long run. Personally, I only discovered Dragon Quest, Fire Emblem and many other games that I've later spent big money on because I pirated the older games in the series.

Piracy is a service problem, not a people problem. If the services are there, piracy disappears (See the massive decline in torrenting following the rise of Netflix and Steam). Companies have nothing but themselves to blame. Like Nintendo, if they actually offered a decent service that allowed access to their older games, very few people would pirate them anymore; they don't so people (including myself )do.

No, money being won now, because without piracy, the gaming market here would've remained niche.

Uh... No...

The national acceptance and adoption of internet is what popularized video games once the video game industry began implementing internet functionality en masse.

Once internet console gaming hit it's stride on Xbox 360 & PS3, a wide audience of console gamers were exposed to internet multiplayer in a fashion that was otherwise predominantly exclusive to PC gamers, considering thats where it was largely the only place to access internet in a household during the mid 90's all the way up to the mid 2000's. (yes, I'm well aware that the PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast had "some" online games, but for obvious reasons can't be used as an example)

By the end of the X360's & PS3's lifecycle, the adoption rate of online multiplayer had skyrocketed and the video game industry hasn't been the same since. Couple this with the advancements of visual fidelity in modern gaming, higher & more accessible internet speeds, and it was no longer "for nerds" or "losers" and video games finally became an accepted entertainment medium.

Piracy has ZERO credibility for the popularization of video games. Infact, PC gaming and its association with hackers and hobbyists did more harm than good for lifting the stigmatism surrounding video games...